Scared To Death (Live to Tell #2)(82)

“What if the line is bugged?”

He pulls his own cell phone from his pocket. “Dial it from here.”

“It might be bugged, too.”

“If it is, then it’s too late to do anything about it anyway. I’ve been using it nonstop. Here. Hurry up and call.”

He glances again at the house as she dials. She left the front door ajar so they can hear Renny, just in case…

“Hurry,” he urges Elsa again.

“I am!”

It isn’t like her to snap at him.

He bites his lip to keep from snapping back, knowing she’s under terrible pressure. They both are. He can feel his jaw clenching painfully as he watches her punch in her PIN.

“I have messages,” she murmurs after a moment.

“Some are from me. I left you a bunch.”

She nods, listening. Her eyes grow wide.

“What? What is it? Is it Mike?”

“No, it’s…” She presses the replay button and passes the phone to him, her hand trembling. “Listen to this. Oh my God, Brett. Oh my God. She’s the one who did this…”

She? She who? What on earth is she talking about?

Brett quickly raises the phone to his ear. The message is already under way.

“—need to talk to you,” an unfamiliar female voice is saying. “Over the phone or in person, whatever…I, um, understand if you’d rather not talk to me after…after all this. But I hope you will. I’m sorry.”

The caller hangs up.

“Who?” Brett asks Elsa, his pulse racing. “Who is this?”

“Marin Quinn. Jeremy’s birth mother,” she adds, as if he doesn’t know.

“What is she talking about? What is she apologizing for?”

“What do you think? It must have been her. She’s the one who took those pictures of Renny.”

“But why? Why would she do this to us?”

“She’s a mother who lost a child, Brett. That does terrible things to a person.”

Yes. Nobody knows that better than we do.

“She gave him up when he was a newborn, though,” Brett points out. “It’s not the same thing as raising a child and having him kidnapped and murdered.”

Elsa is shaking her head before he even finishes speaking. “She still lost him. You can’t assign degrees to the pain. That’s like saying that losing Jeremy didn’t hurt me as much as it would have if I’d given birth to him. He was my son. He was her son. She’s probably torturing herself, thinking that if she hadn’t given him up, he’d—”

“Or blaming us,” Brett cuts in as it dawns on him.

Elsa presses a hand to her mouth. “You think…?”

“She wants to punish us for not taking care of her son.”

“By harming our daughter?”

“Or at least by threatening to.”

“But that’s…”

Crazy. Yes. Better Marin Quinn than his wife.

“You said it yourself, Elsa. Grief does terrible things to a person. Anyway, she reached out to us. That message made it sound like she’d thought better of it.”

“You’re right. So you think it’s over?”

“I didn’t say that.” Brett shakes his head grimly. “I don’t know what to think. But at least we know who we’re dealing with now.”



Opening her eyes, Marin sees that her bedroom is brighter than usual. Frowning, she turns her head to look at the bedside clock and is startled to find that she slept through the night for a change. She must have been really exhausted. Or—thinking back, she remembers that she’d had an empty stomach last night. The medication must have hit her harder than usual.

Last night…

She yawns, stretches—then sits up abruptly.

Annie.

Marin bolts from the bed.

Annie was sick, in the hospital…what if something happened to her in the night?

Marin hurries down the hall to her younger daughter’s room. The door is closed. She doesn’t bother to knock. Annie’s probably asleep, and even if she isn’t, she’s not the privacy fanatic her sister is.

Opening the door, she’s relieved to see that her child is resting peacefully: eyes closed and mouth open, snoring as usual.

Reassured, she closes the door quietly and starts back down the hall.

Caroline’s door is closed, too.

Should I look in on her?

Remembering the way they’d left things last night—in anger—Marin hesitates.

Caroline’s attitude problem was increasingly difficult to handle even before yesterday’s near-disaster. Marin probably still has some cooling off to do before she can possibly have a rational conversation with her.

Probably?

Even now, thinking of poor Annie in the hospital, she’s furious all over again.

In fact, she can’t even picture herself and Caroline forgiving each other and moving past this.

There’s nothing wrong with needing outside help…

Lauren Walsh’s words ring in her ears…yet so do her own.

All I need is time, and everything will be just fine.

Yesterday, she honestly believed that.

Today…

I don’t know what to believe. I don’t even know who I am anymore…